Japan’s medical industry has generally been slow to embrace digital technology, with many clinics still keeping patient records and writing prescriptions on paper.
But a few domestic startups have recently launched chatbot-powered apps designed to help treat a range of conditions, such as hypertension, alcohol addiction and insomnia. Unlike the plethora of lifestyle apps anyone with a smartphone can download, these are prescription-only medical apps whose efficacy has been demonstrated in clinical trials.
For Taro Ueno, a psychiatrist and brain researcher, the idea to develop an app for insomnia came from observing how doctors in Japan overprescribe sleeping pills.